“It was pretty common,” Bush said of his substance use during that time. A former classmate of Bush’s, Peter Tibbetts, recalled to the newspaper that the first time he ever smoked marijuana was with Bush, in some woods near their dorm.

“The first time I really got stoned was in Jeb’s room,” Tibbetts told the Globe. “He had a portable stereo with removable speakers. He put on Steppenwolf for me.” Tibbetts was eventually forced to leave the boarding school after being accused of using drugs.

“Florida leaders and citizens have worked for years to make the Sunshine State a world-class location to start or run a business, a family-friendly destination for tourism and a desirable place to raise a family or retire,” Bush said before the November midterm election. “Allowing large-scale marijuana operations to take root across Florida, under the guise of using it for medicinal purposes, runs counter to all of these efforts.”

Reacting to the Globe story, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted Bush over his “hypocrisy” on marijuana.

“You would think he’d have a little more understanding then,” Paul, who may be a rival to Bush in the Republican primary, told The Hill Friday. “He was even opposed to medical marijuana. This is a guy who now admits he smoked marijuana but he wants to put people in jail who do.”

The Globe also spoke to some of Bush’s former classmates, who recalled a “physically imposing” young man who was seen as intimidating by some and a bully by others. Tibbetts recalled a story to the newspaper of an occasion during their boarding school days when he and Bush taunted a smaller student who lived in their dorm by sewing his pajama bottoms so that the student couldn’t put them on.

Bush told the Globe he didn’t remember the incident or any other bullying, and was surprised that some of his former classmates viewed him that way. “I don’t believe that is true,” Bush said, adding that it was more than 40 years ago and not possible for him to remember.

It isn’t the first time that allegations of bullying have surfaced about Bush’s high school years. Another classmate of Bush’s told Vanity Fair in 2001 that he remembered Bush as a bully as well, and that there was “a kind of arrogance” about him during his time at Andover.

WORDS

QUOTES

ARTS

Welcome to LABProLib!

LABProLib stands for Latino and Black ProgressiveLiberalism! We are not a news website. Our website catalogs online articles, events, photos, cartoons, selected powerful satire stories, and more that speaks to people of color and our allies. Most of the articles are complemented with photographs and graphs that has been appropriated into memes.